Immerse yourself in a gorgeous hand-painted world on a search for your true identity. As the mysterious warrior, Dust, your action-packed journey will take you from peaceful glades to snowy mountaintops and beyond.

Reviews

Steam Big Picture

About This Game

Immerse yourself in a gorgeous hand-painted world on a search for your true identity. As the mysterious warrior, Dust, your action-packed journey will take you from peaceful glades to snowy mountaintops and beyond. At your disposal is the mythical Blade of Ahrah, capable of turning its wielder into an unstoppable force of nature, and the blade's diminutive guardian, Fidget. Battle dozens of enemies at once with an easy-to-learn, difficult-to-master combat system, take on a variety of quests from friendly villagers, discover ancient secrets and powerful upgrades hidden throughout the massive, open world, and uncover the story of an ancient civilization on the brink of extinction as you fight to uncover your own past.

This is a game that I had been meaning to play for a while now. The visuals in the screenshots look absolutely stunning. Dust has been out since early 2013 and it has that real polished feeling of a fantastic game. Essentially this is a hack and slash, RPG, side scroller. The combat system is basic, but does exactly what you need it to do. All of the attacks look and feel satisfying, as well as the parry system which normally is something that gets overlooked in a lot of games like this.

The musical score behind Dust is somewhat of a masterpiece too. I am surprised they haven’t released just the sound track as it is beautifully crafted. The level design on offer here is interesting too. Each "zone" is split into separate areas, which can be a little daunting at first because they are all huge. One gripe I did find is that the map in game isn't very clear and can sometimes cause confusion as to where you actually are on it.

As I said above, the combat system is basic, so this means you can master it very easily. There are a few combos to learn as you progress, as well as a welcome addition of a crafting mechanic. I also liked the feature where if you sold something to a shop, they would then stock this in the future so you can buy multiple copies of it; this is really helpful when you are trying to craft your armour and weapons.

This took me roughly twenty hours to complete everything on offer, main story line, challenges and side quests. The game did feel slightly repetitive towards the end of the last chapter however.

I would really recommend you pick up Dust: An Elysian Tail, you can more often than not find it on sale, but I would still recommend this at full price.

I'll be honest, I only bought this because the Humblr Store had it on sale and it was a pretty looking game with furries that took itself seriously instead of being a mascot title. That's a rarity, especially in the kind of mainstream stuff you buy on Steam or XBLA.

That was the reason I bought it at first, but I finally got around to playing and it wound up being the best $2.99 I ever spent and a game that might actually break the top 10 on my list of all time favorite games.

The first thing you'll notice going in is that the graphics are BEAUTAFUL and there's some real nice fine detail in the animations like the fabric of Dust's clothes rippling as he moves. The effects like explosions, projectale attacks, and lighting are also really pretty and can result in some great atmosphere and awesome moments during combat. It feels almost like an interactive cartoon at times.

It also ran maxed out flawlessly on my 750ti/FX-8320 at a solid 60FPS that only dropped to 51 during loading and cutscenes, but I think that's more an issue with how the game load assets than something that more horse-power or optimization is going to fix

The second thing is the story is great and will more than likely bring you close to tears on far more than one occasion, I can only describe the emotional rollercoaster than ensues from the ending of the second chapter onwards as something that wants to break you one way or the other. The story has some fantasy cliches, but it uses them well to paint a world that world that likable because it would be unashamably idealistic if it wasn't at war. I'd almost say it remained that way in spite of itself because all the drama and heartache makes it feel very much like you're earning a happy ending for all the people you help along the way.

The game also has a welcome sense of humor in it's lighter movemets that comes from hanging a lampshade on common RPG tropes like stuffing huge items in your pockets or random fetch-quests.

The gameplay is a simple side-scrolling RPG with Castlevania exploration and some pretty hefty rewards for putting the effort to cheack everywhere and uncover every secrect in the gameworld. The combat is very much a button-mashing that relies on timing and keeping up with on-screen action to rack-up combos and avoid getting hit instead of complicated combos or a huge arsenal of moves.